This career essentially chased me down while I was on the spoken-word scene in New York. I kept hearing that my delivery of my poetry - which was very personal and cathartic at the time- was very moving to folks. People thought that I was an actress because of my delivery when I was just dropping into the work and really pouring out my soul.

No art form points like poetry to this originality of language as to its essential and abiding concern.

We recognise in the finished art which is the result of these conditions the best words in the best order - poetry and to put this essential poetry into different classes is impossible.

To know anything of a poet but his poetry is so far as the poetry is concerned to know something that may be entertaining even delightful but is certainly inessential.

So I suppose poetry language the shaping of it was and remains for me an effort to make sense out of essentially senseless situations.

War is not the quintessential emergency in which man has to prove himself as my generation learned at its school desks in the days of the Kaiser rather peace is the emergency in which we all have to prove ourselves.

A diplomatic peace is not yet the real peace. It is an essential step in the peace process leading towards a real peace.

We have a long way to go before we are able to hear the voices of everyone on earth but I believe that providing voices and building bridges is essential for the World Peace we all wish for.

The question is what are we to do in order to consolidate peace on a universal and durable foundation and what are the essential elements of such a peace?

Another essential to a universal and durable peace is social justice.